Lion and Magic Boy

Finally, I’m getting to this creative meme, tagged by Isabella of Change Therapy.

1. Father is Genius; I Can’t Compete.

2. Read Many Books; Cats on Bed.

3. Hugs? Not Us; We Just Don’t.

4. Quit Piano Lessons. Guy Too Creepy.

5. Horses! Wishes Paid Off, Took Years

6. Good Grades: Always Expected, Never Enough.

7. Drama? Stage? I Like This a Lot!

8. Practice Flute? No! Singing? No Need.

9. First Boyfriend At 15, Much Crying.

10. Drugs? One Try, Then Many. Hooked!

11. College? So What! I Don’t Care.

12. News Flash: Kids? Not For Me!

13. Army? Me? A Place To Escape.

14. Marry At 19? Ok, Why Not?

15. Baby? I Know What I Said.

16. The Young Mom. Drink the Kool-Aid.

17. Divorce: Obvious Next Step, Bye Dad!

18. Single Mom, What Am I Doing?

19. Anorexia Beckons, I Look So Hot!

20. More Marriage, Can’t Make it Work.

21. Dream Job Finally, Even Without Degree.

22. Mr. Right? Him? Maybe….I Hope So.

23. Baby? And Another? How About Three?

24. Stay Home. Clean and Cook. Dream.

25. Time To Escape: Ten Years Enough.

26. Colorado: Mountains, Love. We Must Stay.

27. Court Battles: Time, Money, Heartbreak, Loss.

28. It’s the Children Who Lose, Stupid.

29. Hi Self! Where Have You Been?

30. Paid To Write? My Dream Job!

[tags] stories in six words, six word stories [/tags]

Today it feels like I am finally getting it: I cannot divide myself twelve ways.

I have been sitting here all evening with my ass parked in front of my computer, a rapidly-aging and cranky PC to which I am not afraid to say out loud right now I that would love to trade in right this minute for a shiny new MacBook, and don’t you think I won’t do this one day when this thing finally refuses to boot up (having the last laugh of course as it fades to a permanent black over all my photos, files, and the crappy novel I wrote last November), and running up the steps every 20 minutes to console and adjust poor Eric who has yet another respiratory whatever-it-is-this-time and can’t breathe and hates it and fights it and so is restless all night, insisting on sleeping in my bed which means of course that I cannot sleep because I know that at any moment he will sit up, eyes still fastened shut, and then fall over dead asleep but in another position that will cause him to slide head-first off the bed, and so it has become my job to remain awake and vigilant all night to ensure that at least one of us is sleeping and not lying face down on the floor.

It turns out it’s not that easy to function on 2 hours of sleep a night for very long, not nearly as easy as it is to write an incredibly long and aimless sentence like the one above that surely would take a Faulkner Award for Lengthiness and Use Of Commas and Other Punctuation if there were such an award. [pause] Is there?

So on Two Magic Hours I am sitting here attempting to become suddenly witty and appropriately snarky for that other writing thing I do, and meanwhile there is still the cat that apparently came issued with my chair and so has claimed his right to sleep here, on top of me if he has to, claws frequently extended and causing little snags in my otherwise holey jeans and the white leg skin directly underneath, insisting that I hold him up from falling so that the claws do not have to do this for him. I agree of course that it’s good to avoid the claws and so I have found that my legs remain rigid the entire time I sit here, ass parked in front of the computer.

Which is much the same position I used to find myself when one or the other of the children was smaller and I had allowed myself to become essentially a nap platform for them, mouth still nipple-attached, my arms going rigid and holding a relaxed little body for up to 2 hours, and I ask myself what is it about the insanity of motherhood that would drive one to continue to hold that baby instead of gently putting him/her down, other than the certain awareness that once I did so, that child’s eyes would open just as automatically as the somewhat creepy doll’s eyes did of the one doll I owned as a child, the one whose hair I cut with a child’s certainty that it would grow back.

So I’m sitting here, ass perched still in front of this ancient computer, books lying unread and taunting me from their shelves. The Ex came back “in the country” today from the super-duper-double-secret vacation location he would not divulge until his return and picked up the children for exactly 1.5 hours this evening, during their dinner time, dropping them off again to of course have dinner with me, and during this 1.5 hours I wondered to myself, “Self, what are you going to do with this gift, this bonus of time alone, completely alone?”, and of course I had to use that time to read, which in turn made me sleepy, and so I slept sitting half-upright in a chair in front of the fake fire for 20 minutes, causing extreme disorientation upon awakening as it did not go very far in addressing the deficit in which I find myself now.

Adding to all this the normal and regular demands of being a single mother, and calculating rapidly now as I remember and list for myself all the other things going undone: the writing I must be doing, the blog, the novel (ha!), the journal, the Morning Pages, taking a bath (who let that one in?), scooping the kitty box, reading a book or three, catching up with family, creating and re-creating who I am and where I am going, examining patterns and thought and behavior, and I begin to see myself stretching slowly, ever thinner, dividing in ever smaller and smaller pieces.

[This post was entered in January's Blogging For Books competition at The Zero Boss.]

[tags]time; cranky, crappy PCs; cats; sleep; writing; my ass[/tags]

My first kiss came from a boy whose name I no longer remember, someone at the roller rink my friend Paula and I used to frequent on Friday nights in the 7th grade. She’d wear her embroidered jeans and we’d skate round and round in our laced-up white boots to the sound of “Benny and the Jets”, already an oldie but very new to my tender ears that were raised on alternating silence and the booming bass of the cannons in the “1812 Overture”.

It was clear what Paula and I were there for: the skating was secondary, but here was a place to meet boys! Lots of boys! Mostly we knew none of them, for the rink was far enough away from home that our anonymity was secure. In short, I could be anybody here, and no one knew, for instance, that I was a year younger than all my classmates and the last to wear a bra. So I’d throw on my tight knit purple sweater, the hippest thing in my wardrobe (which could not compete with those embroidered jeans), and hope for the best while bidding one of our parents goodbye in the parking lot.

On many occasions Paula and I were approached by a group of boys who made it clear that they wished to hang out with us. Usually this would consist of skating in the general vicinity of the boy or boys, while Paula and I hung together and whispered a lot. Sometimes we’d join in a game of crack-the-whip, which would up the ante considerably in that hand-holding would be involved.

We knew that once it got to hand holding, this was serious stuff and we’d have to hold back on the whispering.

A couple of times a night, the management would take a break from the usual counter-clockwise circle or the Hokey-Pokey, and dim the lights, throw on a disco ball, and call it a “couple’s skate.”

This, of course, was the ultimate. Just you and The Boy, out there holding hands, skating together. There might even be some conversation involved, but usually I was concentrating too hard on not falling.

One night, a particular boy and his entourage tailed us all night, and when the lights were dimmed I had the sinking feeling that it was me who would be chosen to skate with him. Yep.

So round and round we went, my hand in his sweaty one, feeling on display, knowing that everyone in the rink was watching me, judging me by who I was skating next to.

Did I mention that he was shorter than me?

So the song is about to end, and the poor guy leans over for a chaste kiss on my cheek.

My first kiss. Ever.

Just then, the wheels of our skates lock together, I go down, and he goes zooming across the rink.

I did score a phone number, though, the number that Paula used to taunt me with for years afterward: 876-9191. (Or was that 867-5309? No, that was Jenny’s number.)

I still remember the number, just not his name.

Life is like that, I guess.

I will be the first to admit that some serious introspection has gone on in my household these past two months. Not only do I have the time for it, finding myself completely alone at times for the first time in many, many years, but Michael’s leavetaking brought something to me, the opportunity to examine our relationship, my part in it, where it might be headed and how we plan to re-craft it. Foremost and overall, then, I have finally taken the time to begin to look at, really look at, who I am, who I have been, and most importantly, who I wish to be.

It has been said, and I truly believe this, for what is the meaning of life otherwise, that we create our own reality.

Let that sink in a bit: we create our own reality.

Mmm, a good one, don’t you think? Rife with possibilities. I think I’ll pluck some nice ripe possibilities right now.

Therefore, I plan to re-create myself, discarding the parts that no longer serve, enhancing others, bringing still others out into the light.

Tonight, plodding along in the spirit of What Everyone Does At New Year’s, I briefly explained the concept of resolutions to Nathaniel and Serena and asked them what their resolution for 2007 might be.

Nathaniel: I don’t know. [translation: I see puberty about to hit and I'm practicing. Go away.]

Serena: I don’t know. [translation: I don't want to be outdone by my older brother. If he says "I don't know" I'd better follow suit.]

Eric: More throwing things off the 2nd floor balcony.

Then they all wanted to know mine, naturally, being unwilling to pony up themselves.

I thought about this.

I thought mainly about impatience.

I have a lot of that, impatience. I’m very good at it. But I’m not sure that’s an asset.

It’s been said also that impatience is the fear of missing out. This resonates with me. I can see this in myself.

Impatience reverberates throughout my life. It’s more than inwardly tapping my foot in line while the person in front of me places 12 items (I count them) on the Under-10-Items belt. It’s more than finishing people’s sentences for them, or jumping in with my own when they pause to take a breath.

It’s an inward feeling of being unsettled, unhappy. Nothing is ever enough. Expectations form, which when unmet become frustration which in turn leads to anger. And anger, whether it is expressed or repressed, is still anger. It turns bright light-filled spaces within you dark and ugly and sad.

So I’ve had enough.

It’s time, then, to explore impatience and to begin to turn it to acceptance.

And in so doing, I plan to find what has lain inside me for years during various forms of abuse and manipulation.

The revolution has begun.

I embrace you, 2007.

Oh, Happy New Year, everybody. I hope 2007 is a wonderful year for you and yours.

What are your resolutions?

Remember when you were all set to go to the 7th grade dance, your first one, and though you thought you had on the right clothes, your hair was doing more or less what it was supposed to, and you didn’t have any new zits that day, even though everything was seemingly just right for your grand entrance into the mysterious world of boys-and-girls, of sex, of love, of life, even though everything was going for you, you still felt like something, something was going to happen to prevent you from making that entrance, that maybe nobody would like you, or your breath would smell bad, or god forbid nobody would dance with you? So then you mention the fact to your mom, and she says what moms all over the world say to their children under similar circumstances:

“Be yourself.”

And you go, “Oh. Okay. Myself. Right.”

And then you roll your eyes with that whatEVerrr look, and you go to the dance and everything is fine, because nobody cares about what you’re wearing or your zits or lack of them or your breath, because they are all worried about those very same things about themselves, and haven’t the time of day to give to you whoever you are, and there’s no more pretense and everybody has a good time. Right?

And they all lived happily ever after.

Right?

Well, what if, what if, you never really got that, “Be yourself” thing?

Be myself?

What is that?

This is today’s struggle for me. (Who am I kidding, “today’s”? How about “this year’s”? “this century’s”?)

Who AM I?

What is real?

Oh, I can name labels. Lots of them. Even this blog-persona I’ve crafted has a label, sort of.

Let’s see: Mom. I’m Mom of a twenty-something married woman. I’m Waldorf Mom to a 5th grader and a 1st grader. I’m Mom of a child with “special needs”.

And what else? Here’s a few: I’m a channel. Psychic. Writer. Aspiring writer. Divorcee. Multiple times. Single mom. Daughter. Sister. Lover. Bitch. Liar. (oh wait, wasn’t that a song? shit)

But they all fit, at least partly, yet do they define me?

And if they don’t, what does?

Working on it. I’ll keep you posted.

[tags]introspection, boring, sorry[/tags]

Serena had oral surgery yesterday, and she stayed home from school today as a result. She has a congenital condition that resulted in extremely soft enamel, and her six-year molars came in already with huge holes in them, too large to be saved even with root canals and crowns and years of ongoing dental work, so our very very famous and brilliant dentist (inventor of the Bop Stopper) who writes lots of brilliant articles that use really really big words like “neutrophilic leukocytes” and “tooth avulsion” and who also knows Dr. Spock! And other celebrities! And he wrote a book! Several! which makes him a really really extra-special good dentist, right? told us that if Serena was his little girl (she totally cringed when he said this, like, was I going to give her away, maybe?), he’d have those awful, nasty teeth removed. Pronto.

So we did.

They are huuuuge, by the way. With big black holes in them. Serena kept one and offered up the other as a sacrifice to the Tooth Fairy, who rewarded her with some gorgeous but maybe kind of lame (if you’re 6) Waldorfy postcards, but maybe that’s all she had in her stash that day. I was hoping maybe the Tooth Fairy would bring her a pony or something, after all, this was surgery, complete with general anesthesia and EKG hookups and probably tubes and all, which I was mercifully spared from seeing since I had been banished to the waiting room where I imagined the worst, making myself crazy by wondering, would she make it out of the anesthesia? Or would she become one of those horrifying statistics you hear about and hope it’s happening to someone else, not that you wish that tragedy on anyone but you simply can’t imagine it happening to you. At least I was spared from wondering too deeply about Serena’s potential fate because The Ex was there and chose, out of the thirty or so possible seats in the waiting room, to sit in the one right next to mine and so I spent the hour mostly concentrating on leaning as far to the other side as possible while not being too obvious about it so as to avoid the possibility of accidentally touching the arm of the man I spent ten years sharing the bed of.

Serena’s teeth, by the way? Totally fine. She was a champ, and only dissolved into post-anesthesia tears when she saw me after the ordeal. But I’ve kept her coked up on Ibuprofen, so it’s hard to tell whether her lack of post-op pain is due to the fact that this is the strongest drug she’s been on in her lifetime, that’s right, nary an antibiotic has passed the lips of my little girl, or whether she’s just glad to be home from school, the torture that is a 1st grade Waldorf school classroom, all fairy tales and painting and recess as far as I can tell and certainly a far cry from the rulers and paddles that inhabited my own 1st grade.

The problem, the reason she’s home today, is from the other procedure she had done at the same time that her two decayed monster molars were removed: a lingual frenectomy.

A word or two about Serena’s tongue. When she was born, they said, “She’s tongue tied. You’ll have to get that snipped.” And I’m all, “No way are you touching any part of my child, much less cutting anything in her sweet little rosebud mouth, especially not her tongue that’s all cute and pink and like maybe 2 centimeters long! Please tell me about the accuracy of the snipping machine, will you? And get out of my child’s mouth!”

So we didn’t do anything.

I was told, “You’ll never be able to breastfeed her successfully.” (She went the longest of any of them, 3.5 years. Shh. Don’t tell the breast police.)

Then they said, “She won’t be able to talk properly.”

Incredibly and loudly vocal early on, she was speaking complete and articulate sentences at 18 months. And hasn’t stopped since.

Then they said, “It’s going to cause orthodonthia problems.”

And I’m like, “I’ll believe that when I see it, like everything else.”

But then she said, “I can’t stick my tongue out like everyone else.”

And I had to think, wait, no ice cream cones? No french kissing? I need to rethink this.

So the tongue thing was done while she was under for the teeth, a quick little buzz with a laser. No problem, they said. It heals while it cuts!

There is a problem. Somehow she’s developed this ginormous Fat Lip as a result. Personally, I can’t see how the huge permanent-pout lower lip she’s got now could have been caused by something that happened underneath her tongue, but that’s what they told me.

At any rate, she’s home now, and I took advantage of her excellent brother-sitting abilities to run up and have a quick shower. She’s almost 7 and is more than capable of keeping Eric from throwing blocks at the television or taking the lid off the cat litter box or thrusting wooden spoons down the heater vents for ten minutes.

So I ran up and turned the water on so it wouldn’t be ice-cold when I stepped in. Meanwhile, I undressed. The water is taking an extraordinarily long time to heat up. I’m cold, and naked, so I decide to do a few jumping jacks to keep warm.

Big mistake. BIG mistake. There is a large mirror directly in front of me. I have an excellent view of myself, bouncing up and down. Naked.

Let me digress just a bit and tell you about the fantasy I’ve built for myself these past several years. Knowing that the absolute apex in hotness was reached when I was 25 and Nicole Ritchied myself down to 93 pounds (I’m 5’7″), ever since I went back up to a “normal” weight I’ve engaged in various methods of covering the bits and pieces of my body that didn’t look so nice.

Four children, four pregnancies, can take a toll on a body. Things are a little more, uh, loose than they used to be.

This is coverable. Especially in winter, when layering and long sleeves aren’t considered freakish. Shorts? Absolutely not. Tank tops? No one has seen my arms since 1997.

So the sight of my pale and rather lumpy body lurching up and down in the mirror was a bit startling, to say the least. But I was mesmerized. On the one hand I was saying to myself, “Water, hurry up and get hot so I can stop this madness!”, but on the other hand I was coldly and almost dispassionately looking at my thighs which resembled two 3-ton albino elephant seals in an unfortunate and lumbering approximation of a mating dance, undulating in painfully slow and arduous motion.

I’m thinking about the bouncing, this scary sight, while at the same time remembering that Jack LaLanne invented the jumping jack, the movement that was causing my bathroom floor to bow with every landing of my larger-than-I-thought-it-was body.

Remember Jack LaLanne?

I grew up watching him. The babysitter I had in the 2nd grade used to have his television show on as entertainment while he skipped rope for like half an hour. (Why did I have a male babysitter anyway? Mom? Any answers here?) I remember Jack LaLanne, his belted jumpsuit, his perkiness, his robotic quality.

When Jack was my age, the age I am now, he swam the Golden Gate channel while towing a 2500 pound cabin cruiser. When he was 70, he swam a mile and a half in Long Island Harbor, towing 70 boats carrying one person each. While handcuffed. And shackled.

Damn. I’m putting my clothes on now. And maybe covering that mirror. Forever.

[tags]egocentric dentists, tooth fairy, elephant seals, aging exercise guru[/tags]

Yesterday I figured it was high time to make good on that stupid idealistic promise I made (publicly, I might add!) to do more running more walking less complaining about the (muffled sound of struggle) pounds I have added to my frame since, say, August when I moved to this backward and godforsaken state Pennsylvania.

So I’m out there running walking with occasional spurts of loping running actuality in the darkening gloom of late afternoon, and all I can think about is the fact that asphalt is much much harder than the smooth springy surface of my treadmill, the one I gave up last August because a.) it might not have fit on the moving truck, b.) there was no place for it in the new house other than down in the basement (and would that have been such a bad place for it after all? it’s cool, and quiet, and private, and I can run faster than the spiders), and c.) I really, really, needed the cash. Said treadmill was reluctantly Craigslisted and duly handed over in exchange for a small wad of cash. Though I secretly wonder whether Mr. Craig will ever use the thing, judging by his admirably large belly which likely took years to grow. At least Mr. and Mrs. Craig now have a new towel rack.

So I’m out there, trying not to think about the numbness of my fingers, especially in my right hand, the one that keeps retrieving the iPod from my pocket in order to check the time (hard to see now in the darkening gloom), haven’t I been out here for HOURS? No? Oh, it’s been 17 minutes? Shit. Keep running walking. Even though, look, a rapist! There in the trees! With his dog! Oh, no, he’s going the other way. Maybe he didn’t see me, even though my shoes, remarkably non-wind and cold-resistant, evidently light up like mini beacons, to attract not only would-be rapists but also to deter drivers from thinking I’m simply some deer begging to be made into roadkill (they do ASK for it, don’t they? And leap onto moving cars? At least, that’s what The Ex keeps saying about all the deer he’s plowed into he claims have hit his car, I think the death toll is up to 3 now).

And through the deepening rapist-free gloom, all I can think about is (naturally) my next blog post. Aren’t you glad I’m thinking about you like that? Like, ALL THE TIME? I luv you like that, you know.

Yesterday before the running walking fiasco (which I am completely recovered from this morning I might add, thank you for asking), I went down to the pet store that on weekends has cats and dogs on display for potential adoption. HEY! HERE’S A THOUGHT! What if people did that? For mating purposes? You could go along, see all the men in cages lined up, ties askew, tongues lolling (wait, that’s dogs), all puppy-eyed and hopeful, hurling themselves at the walls of the cages, saying “pick me! pick me!”. I would pay to see that.

As it turned out it was almost a complete waste of quite a bit of my time, both from navigating mall-crazed traffic and from the sheer number of people milling around while holding helpless little but achingly cute kittens at the pet store, but at least I’ve done a bit of reconnaissance for when I bring Serena, Nathaniel, and Eric back there sometime to make some cat-choices of our own (I so wanted to walk out of there with a cat, but I knew they’d never forgive me).

And, I had another I-don’t-need-an-eye-doctor moment — Going past a mini-storage facility, the sign clearly read: “SELF-STORAGE HATRED”. I thought, how handy! You can store all your hatred in one place, far away from spouse or children or that stupid person in the cashier line at Target who has on an asphyxiatingly copious amount of cologne and who insists on having the price checked of EVERYTHING they are buying, like they couldn’t have done that beforehand? AND they are paying by check, which takes them TEN MINUTES to write, does their signature have to be in perfect Spencerian script?

But no, a second glance revealed: “SELF-STORAGE HATFIELD”. Oh. Damn. And I had such plans for storing hatred.

I’ve been tagged by Rebecca for this lovely little meme, entitled “Six Weird Things About Me”.

1. I can move the pinkie toe on my right foot independently of all my other toes.

2. While crossing my eyes, I can move my left eye back and forth rapidly (this used to freak out my employees when I’d do it in a meeting).

3. I do not like ice cream.

4. I love the smell of gasoline. And Magic Markers.

5. All this typing? 50,000 words last month and 30 blog posts? Two fingers.

6. Of all the places in the world I’d like to visit, Hawaii is near the bottom of the list (although if you gave me a free trip there, I’d go. Grudgingly.)

Hmmm. So how does this game work? I’ve got to tag someone else? Okay……how about Christina?

[this post is first in a series of, oh, hundreds, entitled, Bad Things I Have Done. Next up is "When I Ran Over My Son's Foot With The Car", and after that is "Divorce American Style: Marry Early and Often".]

I would say I can pinpoint the beginning of all my relationship troubles as having begun in the 4th grade.

My taste in boys at that time ran to the Bad Boy variety. Keith Hawk was short, popular, irreverent, traded on his looks and was something of a showoff, so naturally he got my attention even though I was probably a good six inches taller than he was. Whatever.

Keith had a friend, a hanger-on who orbited around him as did many others, named (I’m making this up but it might be close) Stephen. Not Steven-with-a-V, which would be cool, but Stephen-with-a-PH, which is lame*. And apparently lame-Stephen had a crush on me. He was also short, but not cool-short like Keith was, and had a squished-up face and a nerdy smile just crying out for braces with headgear. I’d probably totally go for him now, but in the 4th grade cool was everything, and he was Decidedly Not Cool. Keith could pull off the whole 70′s-striped-pants look and had a shirt that laced at the neck, but on Stephen it was just Wrong. So Wrong.

And for weeks he was secretly putting notes in my desk. They said: I like you.

AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHH! Oh, the horror!

Something had to be done about this. I enlisted the aid of my BFF Jennifer, and another friend who I privately thought of as the Third Wheel, was her name Kathy? She had moved to our Northern California school mid-year from Washington (wow! so it’s a city AND a state?), and immediately went to work undoing all the BFF stuff I had so diligently worked on with Jennifer for a year and a half, or in other words a lifetime, and she was trying to HONE IN on MY territory and become BFF with Jennifer too. Instead. Of me. This would never do, and I plotted revenge, but at the same time I needed her firepower to take care of this little Stephen creep.

We arranged to meet Stephen and two of his friends (Keith of course, and maybe Ross Porter. I liked him too, and he was taller than Keith, a big plus) after school one day to “discuss” the notes. Jennifer, Kathy, and I loaded our purses (did I use to carry a purse everywhere? IN THE 4TH GRADE?) with rocks, and we waited.

When the boys arrived, we simply began hitting them with our purses. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Oh, and the notes stopped after that.

*except when it’s the middle name of the man I’m in love with.

Before this month began I gave a little rundown on a few things I had planned for the month. Let’s check my progress, shall we?

1. This bloggaholic thing. Daily. Check.

2. The novel thing. 25000 words, on schedule. Right on! uhh, check.

3. The yoga thing. Almost daily. Um. Okay, check.

4. Eating? My diet has been consisting of oatmeal and corn tortillas. Not bad, right? We’ll just give that a check.

5. The alcohol thing. Very good! A star AND a check.

6. Sleep. Right on schedule, 4 hours a night. And….check.

So, no problem! See what happens when you have goals  have a life  set your expectations low?

Wait. Just. A. Minute. There.

What? Who said that?

This is your conscience speaking.

My what?

Exactly.

So, uh, what do you want?

The truth, of course. I always want the truth.

But I told the truth.

Not all of it.

[...............................] Oh. That.

Yes, “that”.

Hey, that sounded sarcastic! Aren’t you supposed to be impartial or something?

Save it, sister, for someone who cares. I’m just reporting the facts. Did you, or did you not, omit something from your report just now?

Well, uh, I….

WELL? DID YOU? [tapping foot]

Hey, you’ve got feet? What’s up with that?

Never mind. And don’t try to change the subject!

Oh. Okay.

So what about it?

What about what?

The part you left out, that’s what!

You tell, I’m too tired from not sleeping and all that yoga [yawns].

Hey, I’m supposed to be getting all the laughs here!

Well? [tapping foot]

What the—–HEY! mmmmph

Well, that’s that [dusting off hands]. Oh. Hi. [lowers voice to a whisper] I think she was talking about all the running and cycling I’m doing, uh, not. exactly. doing. Whatever. Some people are wired waaay too tightly.